is it me? or is the used bike market seem very depleated??? not the choice or amount there normaly is?
Probably due the continuing economic squeeze people would change their bikes on a regular basis aren’t. And people do seem to be holding on to there bikes longer.
No your not mistaken - I’ve been looking at the used bike market for the last six months and the choice is very limited compared to say 5 years ago.
I guess due to the recession people are not buying new bikes which obviously affects the amount of used bikes that are coming onto the market.
Funny I haven’t noticed it…but surely a recession also means a lot of people unloading bikes that they see as a luxury they can’t afford anymore?
Weekend bikes that suddenly look like a liability when the redundancy notice arrives.:blink:
Maybe it hasn’t got to that stage yet? People are hanging on to their bikes rather than taking a hit and changing them every couple of years like they used to.
If the economy continues to tank maybe that’s what we might see next year or the year after.
For some the bike may seem a luxury at the moment but if you lose your job that comes with a company car the bike becomes you’re main form of transport. therefore it is a necessity. That’s my argument anyway.
I was talking yesterday to some chums who had PX’d 3 bikes for 1 new, the dealer wanted two for their showroom, as talking points. The other was to be sold on at cost price (£600) to a dealer who supplied the 2nd hand market. It would probably turn up at a place in Reigate for circa £1750.
There is definitly not the volume of 2nd hand in the “official” dealers these days, they cannot afford to have money tied up in stock that takes ages to sell. Where as a S/H dealer can take a punt on a bike like the clean low mileage 2002 Hornet mentioned above for £1000 and expect to get £1500 out of it.
Dealers seem to think the best way is just to ship the P/X out and make the money on the new sale.
Not that there is vast sales in the new market these days.
was chatting about this at the weekend there have been lots of dealers coming over from europe buying 6 or so bikes at a time seems like they have bled the market dry???
thats exactly whats happening. we can get credit, they cant. ergo, people in europe cant get finance and used bikes market is taking off. its been happening for years now.
Good point…never thought about that
When I was looking a couple of months back almost every private sale I saw where the bike was priced to sell, it was bought and then re-advertised the next day by a dealer for about a grand more than they bought it for!!
I was trying sell my old CBF600 just after xmas. Had it in MCN at a fair price, new tyres, mot etc and didnt even get a nibble. Finally sold it to my local dealer and he only gave me trade value as a favour, knowing the money would be spent back in his dealership. I was off work without pay so was desperate!
When I asked him why the lack of interest, he said the big manufacturers were doing such good deals with 0% finance etc that REAL prices had dropped in the secondhand market. As has been said, most dealers have a huge stock of used bikes and he re-advertised mine with an extra £1000 on top. He wont sell it but on paper he did a good deal.
I suspect many dealers take bikes in part ex, but with so many good deals on new bikes they take them reluctantly or buyers are hanging onto their old bikes when buying new thinking they are worth more than they actually are?
Been looking to add a tourer to the mancave but they still holding their prices not many bargains out there, will keep looking
Big manufacturers doing such good deals? I remember back in 2009 it was possible to get a middleweight like the Bandit 650S for £3999 and a ZX-6R for £5500-6000. Then prices went silly and now the only middleweight in that range is the Chinese WK650. I heard all the stories from my local dealers… the exchange rate, the cost of shipping them in containers going through the roof, bikes being priced artificially low for too long etc etc. I don’t know much about the exchange rate but am sure it did something to jack up bike prices, however I do know about shipping costs and while they went up briefly, they came back down again. I think a lot of it is contrived.
I remember buying a brand new Daytona 675 in 2007 - it was £6999 OTR
Now a new Daytona is £8899 OTR
That looks o me to be a rise of about 28% in 5 years. I know VAT has gone up from 15% to 20% but that still seems a bit high to me…especially since the Triumph Thailand factories are now fully online and should be churning them out at a much lower cost???
There’s still a few bargain Sprint 1050s to be had out there - LB hasn’t bought all of them just yet 
:hehe:
Cant comment on new prices from previous years but a quick search found a pre-reg ER6 '13 plate with 100 miles on it, 36month 0% finance for £5000.
in a nutshell i give my verdict they all gone abroad they was buying up like mad last year big time
Excuse my ignorance, but not being aware of foreign dealers coming over to buy up bikes until very recently, how are they doing this?.. Are they coming over in a van and doing the rounds of the classified ads until they fill their van, or are they touring dealers and buying like 6 trade-ins in a one’r?
Also, how come people in other European countries can’t get finance?.. I can understand Spain, Greece etc, but what about France, Germany, Poland? I thought we Brits were in the **** financially, or are our banks just more ‘generous’ with their lending?
I have gone on to the German Ebay site and searched for GSX / Gixxers and came up with this…
http://www.ebay.de/sch/i.html?_odkw=suzuki&_osacat=9804&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR10.TRC0.A0.Xsuzuki+gsx&_nkw=suzuki+gsx&_sacat=9804
It came up with 103 bikes for sale (as compared to the UK site listing 499 bikes)
Are they more expensive?
It’s hard to compare the two markets since,although German population is more than ours - are as many people into bikes as here?
More questions than answers really - mind you Jonny German does some funny things to his bikes thats for sure…